Month: March 2019

Krissy Gear

As someone who lacks the artistic skills that others are endowed with, I decided to use that to my advantage for the composition of my piece. I opted for a very simple aesthetic, to convey my simple (yet important!) message. Something so easily done— yet still so easily forgotten— is the menial task of flipping the switch before leaving a place. I have illustrated a light switch in my drawing, but this can be widely assigned to any type of power switch. I drew my inspiration from the shocking number of times I witness lights left on, illuminating a room with no occupants! This is one of my biggest pet peeves (along with running copious amounts of water without adequate justification for doing so, but we can save that rant for another time), especially when I go home: my stepmom loves to leave all the lights on downstairs before she goes to bed. Leaving lights on seems discreet enough but leaves a noticeable impact on both the environmental level and economic level. I hope my piece reminds people to be more aware before leaving a place to power off.

Zibo Wang

A long, long time ago, the early humans lived in harmony with nature, food was plentiful, and water was clear. Humans could reach a maximum lifespan of 450 years. That was the golden age of men; life for everyone was good. But then the waste nation attacked with ferocity, led by the Waste King himself, and everything changed. Water was polluted, species went extinct, many habitats were destroyed, and hope was lost. But legend has it, a chosen hero master of all four recycling ways can stopp the Waste King. Many years had passed; there is no sign of such man; all seems lost…….

Until today: a mysterious woman emerged out of nowhere….

Her name is Maryse Suzan, a strong, independent woman with a mysterious past. She walked into the town seeing no one on the street. It was sacrifice day, where every town folk is forced to watch in the city center. “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga,” Dr. Plastic said, “ witness this innocent girl die by plastic poisoning.”  He is preparing to shove a handful of plastic down her throat, but he was interrupted by a flying trash can. “Looks like someone needs a good repurposing,” says Maryse as she leaps towards Dr. Plastic. She punches him in the gut and pulls out a shredding machine, then, shoving him inside, shreds him into pieces that can be repurposed for many things like jewelry or lumber. She left without a word because she knows she has many more things to do on her journey to defeat the Waste King.

Maryse Suzan is used to camping outside; physical comfort has no effect on her determination. But when she looks up into the heavily polluted sky, a flash of the past creeps in to her mind. “Yes, the day my whole family died had a similar sky,” she said to herself. Maryse was not always like this; she used to be a normal child with a loving family until the age of  four. Her mom died from lung cancer that year due to the heavily polluted air. And that same winter her dad died trying to feed the family hunting. There was nothing left in the forest due to the rapid destruction of habitat cause by the Waste King. That day she became the chosen one. A young Maryse filled with grief and a need to recycle unlocked the secret to the four ways of recycling. She will stop the Waste King.

This is the Waste capital, a city of great industrial prowess, but it is also a city of death and sickness. Maryse knows what has to be done. She went straight toward the Waste King. The Waste King taunted her, but she did not say a word. Death of her family flashes before her eyes.  “Super-recycle slam!” she screamed. To her surprise, nothing happened. The Waste King laughed, “I am not a simple being you can destroy.  I am humanity in many ways.”  She realized that is true, and the environment can only be saved by everyone doing their part.  So she left and became an environmental speaker. And that is the story of my great-grandmother.

Bhumika Jakkaraddi

As a four-year-old girl, the story of the old woman who lived in a shoe was a toss-aside nursery at best. However, after fifteen years and drastic environmental changes, the old woman whose fate we dreaded as children may have actually been ahead of her time. Tiny homes could offer big changes in the face of resource competition, disastrous climate change and growing energy consumption seen worldwide. At the crossroads of policy, sustainability, and lifestyle, the tiny home movement highlighted by YouTube series and television shows like HGTV’s Tiny House, Big Living could offer solutions for several pressing issues, with the reduction of environmental impacts being at the forefront of its benefits. While the tiny homes highlighted in these series range from rural to retro, their appearances are not their only source of intrigue. Through encouraging low-cost, minimalistic living styles, the optimization of natural resource use and the reduction of waste production, living small could lead to massive environmental improvements for all to benefit from.

So what exactly constitutes tiny living? The answer appears to differ from home to home, as tiny homes vary from not only normal housing but within the realm of tiny houses themselves. The aim of the tiny living movement is to construct functional homes, which utilize the minimum resources necessary for proper functioning. The average tiny home utilizes less than 250 square feet of space and is typically mobile in order to evade normally imposed building codes mandating that living spaces have modern essential amenities and be at least 300 square feet.[1] Non-mobile homes ranging from 250 to 1000 square feet, however, follow the same principles of living as their tinier counterparts. These homes are typically built with sustainable building materials, utilizing scraped building material or sustainably sourced supplies. Due to their reduced sizes, these homes also employ far less energy use due to the decrease of energy required to heat or cool such small spaces.[2] Additionally, tiny homes require far less electricity use, utilizing only 914 kilowatts per year compared to the 12,773 kilowatts per year required for average houses.[3] Proponents of the tiny living movement also encourage the production of less waste, crediting smaller spaces as motivators to create less waste or own fewer items in general. This aids in eliminating unnecessary items from our day to day lives and in identifying items used frequently and thinking of ways to make these items fit into a sustainable lifestyle. By identifying necessary materials in daily living, supporters of minimalistic living encourage individuals to find sustainable alternatives to them, such as swapping plastic bags for reusable ones, bottled water for water bottles and compostable plates and cutlery rather than foam or plastic at large scale events.

While tiny homes take meticulous planning, concentrated efforts in lifestyle change, and infringements on normal living, making the switch to tiny homes could simultaneously improve your approach to living, life satisfaction and the conditions of the environment. Small but powerful, these miniscule homes pack a mighty punch and are looking for new homeowners everyday across the globe: could you be the next one?

[1] https://greenfuture.io/sustainable-living/tiny-houses-sustainable-living/

[2] https://www.ase.org/blog/tiny-homes-are-big-energy-efficiency

[3] https://www.countryliving.com/life/a6110/tiny-house-infographic/

Tiffany Mendez

The world is running out of water. By 2025, it is predicted that nearly 2 billion people may not have enough drinking water to satisfy their needs. New NASA satellite data shows that a majority of the world’s underground aquifers are being worn out faster than they can be filled up. Since 1900, more than 50% of types of wetlands have disappeared and in many parts of the world, 40% of fresh water goes unaccounted for due to water leakage and pipe damage. One of the solutions to this problem is desalination. Desalination is a process that takes away minerals from salt water. However, removing salt from seawater will take up to 10 to 100 times more energy than traditional freshwater treatment methods.

A team of engineers was motivated by this problem and created a new prototype to desalinate seawater in a sustainable and low-cost way by using solar energy. This new device is predicted to double the amount of water used by solar energy. The proposed technology is simple: it was first inspired by plants, which transport water from roots to leaves by transpiration. The device is able to collect seawater using a low-cost porous material. The collected water is then heated by solar energy, which then separates the salt from the evaporated water. Unlike other active desalination technologies that need costly mechanical or electrical components such as pumps to desalinate water, the new proposed technology is based on spontaneous process, which means it does not need the help of machinery, and it is referred to as passive technology. Since it does not use pumps or costly machinery, the device is inexpensive.

This team has been able to reach record values of productivity: up to 20 liters per day of drinking water per square meter exposed to the sun. The main reason behind the performance is that it recycles the solar heat. This prototype is suitable for providing safe drinking water in emergency conditions, for example, areas where flooding and tsunamis occur. This prototype is also useful in third world countries where drinking water is scarce. In the future, the hope of this project is to collaborate with an industrial partnership to make this prototype more durable, accessible, and versatile. Freshwater is the most important resource for human life on earth. Without water, we cannot survive, and almost all our food sources require fresh water to grow or create. As water scarcity continues to present a major issue to society, it is important to take care of our planet and make sure we are doing everything we can to help save it from destruction.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-data-shows-the-world-is-running-out-of-water-2015-6

https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/water/importance_value/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190107131242.htm

Dahye Kim

As coffee became an essential part of an urban lifestyle, easy disposing habits also became a routine for us. The motive for this piece was reducing coffee related waste. One of the largest coffee companies, Starbucks, produces six billion disposable cups each year. Most of the cups are used very temporarily and thrown away easily. While these cups are in our hands less than a day, it takes 20 years to decompose, and for the plastic lids, it takes more than 450 years to completely break down. Most of the waste that is not recycled or used ends up in the ocean, and they are busy invading the marine life.

In order to increase the awareness of disposable cups waste situation, this artwork demonstrates what the Ocean can look like if we produced less waste by bringing our own cups to drink coffee. The materials for this cup are a used Starbucks coffee cup and used Pepsi plastic bottle. Keeping the style of the coffee brand’s font and its arrangement was critical so that people would know what “Bring your own cup and… we proudly conserve” is targeting. Original words (for example, Decaf, shots, syrup…) to specify the types of coffee drinks were changed to the key qualities for a sustainable life. This also is an acrostic that makes the word “nature” when you read the first letters vertically. In order to increase visual aspect of the sea, the plastic bottle was cut and painted blue, which depicts deep blue sea surrounded by beautiful colors of corals reefs. Because of the reused plastic section, a candle was put into the cup to so it can be used as a decorative lantern.